Army Suicides Doubled In July

The Army says suicides among active-duty soldiers more than doubled in July from the month before.

That marks an acceleration of a military-wide trend this year that has caused Pentagon leaders to step up their search for solutions to a problem that has worsened in 2012 as the pace of combat has eased.

The Army had 26 suicides in July among active-duty soldiers, compared to 12 in June. In May it had 16.

Among Army Reserve soldiers not on active duty, there were 12 suicides in July — the same as in June.

So far, there have been 116 suicides by active duty soldiers this year. At that pace, there would be more than 200 by the end of 2012. In 2011, there were 167.

One of the prices of a military that has been at war for a decade, and which was being deployed in minor actions in the Balkans and Somalia for the decade before that, is not only that the military gets stretched at the material level, but that the men doing the fighting get pushed further to the brink then we’ve ever asked any other group of fighting men to do before. Only Vietnam compares to the length of time that we’ve been at a war so far and, even now, we’re not scheduled to be fully disengaged from combat operations until 2014. At least in Vietnam, though, the practice of sending soldiers back to the theater of operations multiple times was not nearly as common. In some sense, then, we’re just learning now what that kind of continual mental and physical stress can do to a person, even one in the kind of top-notch physical condition that combat soldiers typically are.

Comments

This is what happens when a nation goes to war for political purposes.

“We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the Art of War in general and the Commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.”